40th Issue: Classic Disney Stars
My apologies, this issue may be a little shorter than usual, but I will make up for it by writing another one sooner rather than letting a whole month go by!
When we were small, my brother and I watched a lot of Disney movies. Yes, we watched the animated films, but we also watched a lot of classic live action movies from the 50s and 60s like Swiss Family Robinson, Old Yeller, Shaggy Dog, and Babes in Toyland. Most of these movies star the same two child actors – Tommy Kirk and Kevin Corcoran. I honestly knew nothing about them so I decided to look them up.
Thomas Lee Kirk was born in 1941 in Kentucky. His parents moved to LA when Kirk was a baby, looking for better job opportunities. Tommy went to an audition for a play in 1954, when he was still young, and his performance was seen by an agent who signed him. He began working steadily in television for several years. In 1956, Tommy auditioned to be one of the Hardy Boys in a Mickey Mouse Club Serial, and got the part. This was how he began to be associated with Disney Studio.
Tommy made newsreel specials and travelogues for Disney, doing some voice-dubbing work as well, but Old Yeller was his breakout film. He was cast as the lead role, Travis, and became known as an All-American teenager in movies of the time. Kevin Corcoran, who played his younger brother, often was teamed up with him in various films, usually as siblings. He kept working in television, but a couple of years after Old Yeller he starred in The Shaggy Dog, again with Kevin, as well as two other Disney stars who he worked with regularly – Fred MacMurray and Annette Funicello. After Shaggy Dog, he worked in TV again, but when the movie came out it was another hit, and Disney gave him a role as the middle son in Swiss Family Robinson, which came out in 1960. Tommy said this was his favorite movie of all the ones he made.
Tommy then did three more movies with his frequent costar Fred MacMurray. Tommy didn’t actually get along well with Fred, because he said he was looking for a father figure and Fred didn’t like him all that much. Tommy said: “We had a couple of blow ups on set... He was a nice person, but I was just too demanding. I came on too strong because I desperately wanted to be his friend”.
Tommy was however friends with Kevin, the younger actor saying that, “Tommy played my brother in a lot of films and put up with a lot of things that I did to him over the years. He must be a great person not to hate me." Tommy later worked in Babes in Toyland, and worked with Annette Funicello on two other movies in the early 1960s. The two actors were often romantically linked, but they weren’t even friends, just coworkers. Tommy said, “We've always been friendly, but never been friends... But nobody can fault her; she's always friendly and gracious to everybody”.
Tommy kept working steadily, eventually starring in The Misadventures of Merlin Jones in 1964, which was one of the biggest movies of the year. However, Tommy was afraid that his personal life would affect his work life, especially since he was gay and he knew this from a young age. He said,” I consider my teenage years as being desperately unhappy. I knew I was gay, but I had no outlet for my feelings… I didn't know what the consequences would be, but I had the definite feeling that it was going to wreck my Disney career and maybe my whole acting career. It was all going to come to an end”.
When Tommy was 21 years old, filming The Misadventures of Merlin Jones, he started dating a boy he met at a local swimming pool. The boy’s mother found out and told Disney, who did not renew Kirk’s contract. Tommy said, “Disney was the most conservative studio in town.... The studio executives were beginning to suspect my homosexuality. Certain people were growing less and less friendly. In 1963, Disney let me go. But Walt asked me to return for the final Merlin Jones movie, The Monkey's Uncle, because the Jones films had been moneymakers for the studio."
Since the news was not made public, Tommy found another job with American International Pictures, starring with Annette Funicello in a movie musical called The Maid and the Martian, later renamed Pajama Party. Unfortunately, soon after this, it wasn’t Tommy’s sexuality but a different issue that led to his career decline. In 1964, Tommy was arrested for possession of marijuana. The charges were dropped, and Tommy could still get work, but it wasn’t the kind of work that he had been doing before.
As he later said: “After I was fired from Disney, I did some of the worst movies ever made and I got involved with a manager who said it didn't matter what you did as long as you kept working. He put me in every piece of shit that anybody offered. I did a series of terrible things, but it was only to get the money”.
In the late 1960s, Tommy’s life began to get out of hand. He later explained: “I was drinking, taking pills and smoking grass. In fact, I was pretty wild. I came into a whole lot of money, but I threw a lot of parties and spent it all. I wound up completely broke. I had no self-discipline and I almost died of a drug overdose a couple of times. It's a miracle that I'm still around. All of that didn't help the situation. Nobody would touch me; I was considered box office poison.”
Kevin was cast as Tommy Kirk’s younger brother in five movies: Old Yeller, The Shaggy Dog, Swiss Family Robinson, Bon Voyage, and Savage Sam. Fred MacMurray played their father twice, and Dorothy McGuire played their mother twice as well. When Kevin was an adult, he stopped acting and started college. He graduated from California State University with a degree in theater, and returned to Disney to work behind the scenes.
Kevin worked as an assistant director and producer on various Disney live action movies in the 1970s and into the 1980s. He worked on non-Disney TV series too, such as Quantum Leap and Murder, She Wrote. Kevin married in 1972, and was honored as a Disney Legend with his costars in 2006.
I decided to look up Annette Funicello as well, because though I did not remember her, she starred with Tommy Kirk in many of the movies they did for Disney.
Annette Funicello was a Mouseketeer in the original Mickey Mouse Club, and both sang and acted as a teen and young adult. She was Italian American, and was one of the most popular Mouseketeers. She acted in Babes in Toyland, The Shaggy Dog, and other TV roles as well. She wasn’t as comfortable singing as acting, but had a few pop hits in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Paul Anka wrote a song about her – he had a crush on her but Disney wouldn’t let them date.
In her late teens and early adulthood, Annette acted in a movie called Beach Party, and this started a string of beach movies such as Muscle Beach Party, Bikini Beach, Beach Blanket Bingo and others. When she initially began doing these movies, Walt Disney asked that she wear modest swimsuits and keep her midsection covered, but she wore bikinis in every movie and bared her navel.
Annette got out of show business around the time she got married, having three children. She divorced and remarried to a horse breeder, attending many horse races in California in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1992, Annette was inducted as a Disney Legend, and soon after, she found that she had multiple sclerosis, opening the Annette Funicello Fund for Neurological Disorders. In 2013, Annette died at age 70.
When we were small, my brother and I watched a lot of Disney movies. Yes, we watched the animated films, but we also watched a lot of classic live action movies from the 50s and 60s like Swiss Family Robinson, Old Yeller, Shaggy Dog, and Babes in Toyland. Most of these movies star the same two child actors – Tommy Kirk and Kevin Corcoran. I honestly knew nothing about them so I decided to look them up.
Thomas Lee Kirk was born in 1941 in Kentucky. His parents moved to LA when Kirk was a baby, looking for better job opportunities. Tommy went to an audition for a play in 1954, when he was still young, and his performance was seen by an agent who signed him. He began working steadily in television for several years. In 1956, Tommy auditioned to be one of the Hardy Boys in a Mickey Mouse Club Serial, and got the part. This was how he began to be associated with Disney Studio.
Tommy made newsreel specials and travelogues for Disney, doing some voice-dubbing work as well, but Old Yeller was his breakout film. He was cast as the lead role, Travis, and became known as an All-American teenager in movies of the time. Kevin Corcoran, who played his younger brother, often was teamed up with him in various films, usually as siblings. He kept working in television, but a couple of years after Old Yeller he starred in The Shaggy Dog, again with Kevin, as well as two other Disney stars who he worked with regularly – Fred MacMurray and Annette Funicello. After Shaggy Dog, he worked in TV again, but when the movie came out it was another hit, and Disney gave him a role as the middle son in Swiss Family Robinson, which came out in 1960. Tommy said this was his favorite movie of all the ones he made.
Tommy then did three more movies with his frequent costar Fred MacMurray. Tommy didn’t actually get along well with Fred, because he said he was looking for a father figure and Fred didn’t like him all that much. Tommy said: “We had a couple of blow ups on set... He was a nice person, but I was just too demanding. I came on too strong because I desperately wanted to be his friend”.
Tommy was however friends with Kevin, the younger actor saying that, “Tommy played my brother in a lot of films and put up with a lot of things that I did to him over the years. He must be a great person not to hate me." Tommy later worked in Babes in Toyland, and worked with Annette Funicello on two other movies in the early 1960s. The two actors were often romantically linked, but they weren’t even friends, just coworkers. Tommy said, “We've always been friendly, but never been friends... But nobody can fault her; she's always friendly and gracious to everybody”.
Tommy kept working steadily, eventually starring in The Misadventures of Merlin Jones in 1964, which was one of the biggest movies of the year. However, Tommy was afraid that his personal life would affect his work life, especially since he was gay and he knew this from a young age. He said,” I consider my teenage years as being desperately unhappy. I knew I was gay, but I had no outlet for my feelings… I didn't know what the consequences would be, but I had the definite feeling that it was going to wreck my Disney career and maybe my whole acting career. It was all going to come to an end”.
When Tommy was 21 years old, filming The Misadventures of Merlin Jones, he started dating a boy he met at a local swimming pool. The boy’s mother found out and told Disney, who did not renew Kirk’s contract. Tommy said, “Disney was the most conservative studio in town.... The studio executives were beginning to suspect my homosexuality. Certain people were growing less and less friendly. In 1963, Disney let me go. But Walt asked me to return for the final Merlin Jones movie, The Monkey's Uncle, because the Jones films had been moneymakers for the studio."
Since the news was not made public, Tommy found another job with American International Pictures, starring with Annette Funicello in a movie musical called The Maid and the Martian, later renamed Pajama Party. Unfortunately, soon after this, it wasn’t Tommy’s sexuality but a different issue that led to his career decline. In 1964, Tommy was arrested for possession of marijuana. The charges were dropped, and Tommy could still get work, but it wasn’t the kind of work that he had been doing before.
As he later said: “After I was fired from Disney, I did some of the worst movies ever made and I got involved with a manager who said it didn't matter what you did as long as you kept working. He put me in every piece of shit that anybody offered. I did a series of terrible things, but it was only to get the money”.
In the late 1960s, Tommy’s life began to get out of hand. He later explained: “I was drinking, taking pills and smoking grass. In fact, I was pretty wild. I came into a whole lot of money, but I threw a lot of parties and spent it all. I wound up completely broke. I had no self-discipline and I almost died of a drug overdose a couple of times. It's a miracle that I'm still around. All of that didn't help the situation. Nobody would touch me; I was considered box office poison.”
In 1970, Tommy quit acting to get his life together and stop taking drugs. He came out as gay publicly in 1973 and worked as a waiter and chauffeur before opening a carpet cleaning business. He ran that business for twenty years. He acted and wrote sporadically, but blamed only his own mistakes for what happened to his career. Tommy was inducted as a Disney Legend in 2006, along with Kevin Corcoran.
Kevin Anthony “Moochie” Corcoran was born in 1949. He had eight siblings, almost all of whom also did some acting in the 1950s and 1960s. His father was director of maintenance at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios. Between 1956 and 1960, Kevin played several different characters that were all named Moochie. He was in Mickey Mouse Club serials despite not being a Mouseketeer, and was in many other Disney live action movies at the time. He usually was cast as a young boy who wants to hang out with his older brother or older friends and doesn’t like being treated like a little kid, which could get him in trouble.
Kevin was cast as Tommy Kirk’s younger brother in five movies: Old Yeller, The Shaggy Dog, Swiss Family Robinson, Bon Voyage, and Savage Sam. Fred MacMurray played their father twice, and Dorothy McGuire played their mother twice as well. When Kevin was an adult, he stopped acting and started college. He graduated from California State University with a degree in theater, and returned to Disney to work behind the scenes.
Kevin worked as an assistant director and producer on various Disney live action movies in the 1970s and into the 1980s. He worked on non-Disney TV series too, such as Quantum Leap and Murder, She Wrote. Kevin married in 1972, and was honored as a Disney Legend with his costars in 2006.
I decided to look up Annette Funicello as well, because though I did not remember her, she starred with Tommy Kirk in many of the movies they did for Disney.
Annette Funicello was a Mouseketeer in the original Mickey Mouse Club, and both sang and acted as a teen and young adult. She was Italian American, and was one of the most popular Mouseketeers. She acted in Babes in Toyland, The Shaggy Dog, and other TV roles as well. She wasn’t as comfortable singing as acting, but had a few pop hits in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Paul Anka wrote a song about her – he had a crush on her but Disney wouldn’t let them date.
In her late teens and early adulthood, Annette acted in a movie called Beach Party, and this started a string of beach movies such as Muscle Beach Party, Bikini Beach, Beach Blanket Bingo and others. When she initially began doing these movies, Walt Disney asked that she wear modest swimsuits and keep her midsection covered, but she wore bikinis in every movie and bared her navel.
Annette got out of show business around the time she got married, having three children. She divorced and remarried to a horse breeder, attending many horse races in California in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1992, Annette was inducted as a Disney Legend, and soon after, she found that she had multiple sclerosis, opening the Annette Funicello Fund for Neurological Disorders. In 2013, Annette died at age 70.
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